Dell has broken the one million retail units sold barrier, it was revealed in the vendor's fourth quarter earnings call last night.Michael Dell revealed the figure as he sought to reassure investors that although the company is taking longer to turn around than expected, significant progress has been made.
Dell saw its net profit fall by six per cent during its fourth quarter, below analyst's forecasts, and saw the company's shares fall by four per cent during after-hours trading.
Dell's CFO Donald J Carty told investors that the slide in profit was due to a few one-off costs associated with its recent acquisitions of Equalogic and Everdream, as well as severance pay for recent job cuts, including the closure of its kiosks last month.
Speaking about the company's move into retail, Michael Dell told analysts: "We are now in over 10,000 retail stores world and this business is on a $1bn revenue run-rate with one million units sold worldwide.
Dell, however, warned that the company would be taking its time in expanding into retail. "We won't grow at all costs," he told analysts.
He also revealed that one of the company's key objectives is to: "reclaim our heritage as the fastest, most innovative notebook provider in the world." He added that the company has plans to increase the amount of models it puts out during the year by almost 50 per cent.
When asked if the company had plans to aggressively increase the number of locations the firm's products were sold in, as well as the number of SKUs sold, Dell responded: "You'll see us continue to ramp this up. Going from zero to one million units in a couple of quarters is pretty darn fast.
"You'll see a continued set of announcements that expand the range of partners.
Expanding on where the expansion is likely to take place, Dell added: "Most of our progress to date in terms of sales has been concentrated in the US and so we've announced agreements with essentially all the leading retailers in Europe.
"There are many addition ones that we are working on expanding and are currently in the pipeline," added Dell.
Transcript courtesy of Seeking Alpha
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